Even More on Apple Moving to Intel

This topic continues to get an amazing amount of press. I've seen a couple reports that this surely spells doom for the PowerPC platform. I don't think so. First IBM uses the POWER (which at this point actually uses the PowerPC instruction set – nice and confusing) in way too many places – and expensive places at that. Additionally, all three major console manufacturers have gone with IBM chips. This probably means something along the lines of 150 Million or so units shipped (warning: that is a guesstimate). Exact numbers aside, it's more than the number of Mac's that would have been sold. But I think the coup de grace for the death of PowerPC may just be China. China is a huge market in which almost no one has a computer. The largest PC manufacturer that is partially funded by the Chinese government and just happened to be the former IBM PC division. Since compatibility issues are much lower than in a mature market such as the USA (a small number of current PC's mean a small number to be compatible with), there is a somewhat level playing field as far as what the architecture of choice will be. If Lenovo can make a solid PowerPC machine running Red Flag, then I think it may just have a chance. We'll see.
–jeremyApple, IBM, Intel